For years, the inhabitants of Penco, a small town in southern Chile, have resisted the installation of a mining project to extract rare earths in their territory. The project's latest push for approval is a direct consequence of the West's trade war with China. This has triggered a desperate search for new deposits to both undermine China's market dominance and guarantee a steady supply of raw materials for the technology, automotive, and military industries. The community resistance in Penco, facing the political and economic pressure to approve the project, reveals the contradictory colonial logic of 21st-century capitalism, which is betting on sustainability through digitalization and green energy.

Territories: Penco, Chile

What imaginaries of the future and technology do large agribusiness companies promote? How does this vision accelerate monoculture, threaten crop diversity, and compromise our food security? This study moves between two territories: the Agrishow in Ribeirão Preto, where we map the technological imaginaries of Big Agro; and the case of Gleba Tauá, in the Cerrado do Matopiba, “a nova fronteira agrícola” (the new agricultural frontier), where digitization poses new challenges for secular agrarian conflicts. We analyze how drones, AI, and big data are being used to hide deforestation, land concentration, and violence against local communities. These technologies are part of a "digital land grabbing" that displaces communities, pitting ancestral knowledge and socio-environmental justice against the exclusive narrative of "high-tech agriculture”.

Territories: Cerrado of Matopiba, Brazil

Querétaro, a small state in central Mexico, has become the country's primary hub for data centers. This boom is a direct result of neoliberal policies—like the privatization of state-owned companies, financial deregulation, and free trade agreements—that actively promoted the sector's expansion and solidified the country's subordinate role in the digital economy. The profound impacts on both the population and the environment are frequently understated in the government's industrialization narrative; a narrative characterized by institutional opacity. Environmental groups, human rights defenders, and local communities—especially Indigenous peoples and collectives who protect water and land—now face the threat of losing their shared resources linked to emerging technologies.

Territories: Querétaro, Mexico

El Salto, the capital of its namesake municipality in Jalisco, is part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area. Its name comes from the 18-meter waterfall the Santiago River once had. Since the 19th century, this region has used its geographical assets—mountains, the Santiago River, and Lake Chapala— to fuel a devastating industrialization process. Starting with an initial hydroelectric plant and large textile factories, it has expanded relentlessly to become the "Mexican Silicon Valley," with 675 companies, 71 of which are transnational. After decades of exploitation that caused serious environmental damage and human rights violations, Plan Mexico 2025 threatens to intensify this historic crisis through increased foreign investment. The collective Un Salto de Vida, established 20 years ago in response to this widespread devastation, resists by coordinating strategies for territorial defense, political struggle, and environmental restoration. They are building a politicized hope that directly challenges a centuries-old extractive model.

Territories: El Salto, Jalisco, México